My thoughts on the past, the future and the right now
Sometimes I confuse my yesterdays with my tomorrows. It happens easily, a slip of the brain that makes me say, “I had a good day tomorrow,” when I meant yesterday. The mistake is funny or embarrassing in the moment, but it also feels strangely accurate.
I spend so much time thinking about days that haven’t happened yet. The people I haven’t met, the things I haven’t done. Life’s moments, both big and mundane, that have yet to pass me by. In the process, my thoughts on tomorrow start to blur with my thoughts on yesterday. Imagining what these days might be like makes them feel almost like memory, like scenes I’ve already lived.
This overlap between past and future has fascinated us for centuries. Writers create whole books trying to predict and explain the idea of tomorrow. Shakespeare’s Macbeth has a particularly unique take on the futility of tomorrows and the passive passing of time. He wrote:
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
I don’t fancy myself an academic or a poet, but I do enjoy words and I do feel deeply. This passage strikes me as hopeless and melancholy and so overwhelmed with pain that there is no prospect of imagining happiness in the future. Perhaps one of the most famous commentaries on the concept of tomorrow, it almost hurts to read.
Macbeth’s tomorrow comes unwillingly. It promises nothing but pain, just one more day in a repetitive march toward an inevitable end. And it’s definitely relatable at times. On a day that is so sad or frustrating that I forget not every other day will be like it, I can certainly understand this point of view. But I don’t live by it.
My tomorrow is one of possibilities. Tomorrow is where anything might happen, where one encounter or event could shape my life in ways I could never predict. I like to think about my future with optimism, because each day is a chance to start over or to continue something good. Each day matters and each choice matters, and there is nothing futile about that. Even when yesterday feels heavy, tomorrow is open for new outlooks and experiences.
Still, it’s important not to live in the ‘tomorrow’ too much. I’m coming to realize that spending so much time imagining the days ahead makes it easy to forget the one I’m living in. I don’t want my dreams and hopes of the future to come at the expense of my experiences and joys right now. The future is not more important than the present.
Maybe this is why I keep mixing up my yesterdays and tomorrows. I spend so much time reflecting, and then so much time imagining, that the present moment almost slips by me. Today is the only day that is neither imagined nor remembered. It’s the only one that I can shape right here in the moment.
The promise of tomorrow remains exciting to me. But each day means more when I am truly invested in it, when I allow myself to be present and live it fully. The future will come. There will be tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. What matters is the todays, and whether I give them each the attention they deserve before they become yesterdays.